Las tres y todo sereno.

"It's three o'clock and all is well"

Or.

"Unquiet Slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth"

I had been thinking a bit about the serenos. That's how the night watch was named in México. The most traditional picture of them has them yelling about the time and the current state of affairs. "It's three o'clock and all is well!"

Around my town you can still hear them sometimes. They ride their bikes around while playing a ghostly sounding whistle that used to make me stay petrified with fear in bed when I happened to stay up late enough to hear it when I was a kid. It took me a good amount of years before discovering what that sound was and to be honest even today it still makes me feel a bit uneasy.

Nicole needed a ride though.

She got lost downtown, it got late and even though the city she lives in now seems to be a sleepy and quiet one, it is never wise to walk down the streets alone.

Luckily she was drawn into a ghostly sound that seemed to be moving in her direction and with that she found a mysterious and non talkative figure that agreed to help and take her home safely as he kept playing his whistle, and with that giving unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

…

"Unquiet slumbers for the sleepers" and "In that quiet earth" also happen to be the first two parts of the medley that closes 1976 Genesis' Album "Wind and Wuthering" so of course I have chosen them one as the unofficial soundtrack for this piece. Especially the first part, it’s eerie sound fits really well I think.

But I just relate these songs to the piece musically and not necessarily thematically. Or do I..?

I had been wanting to do something with Nicole and the Veladores theme for a while. Their profession lends itself to Nicole's aesthetic too well I think.

Two other things that ended up inspiring this piece are one trip I took to Cuernavaca in 2019 when my "thesis short film" was selected in an animation festival.

One thing I noticed about that city is that, unlike mine, things really stop after 9 pm. It is hard to find business open after that while where I live there's stores and food places open at least until 1 am. That's the type of place I like to imagine the whisperers living, (Andi guess by extension the Worn Down Children's as well) as that in a sense makes them own the night.

This ended up being a Nicole only piece even though when coming up with it I did try out some group dynamics when pitching ideas. Not to over explain it but I ended up going for this because of the contradiction. There's this funny innocence Nicole has that contrasts with her profession. She is the first one to enter a cemetery or a murder mansion yet she can get lost downtown. And even then she would go and ask help from a ghost. One that still rides around town in an effort to make people feel safe even if sometimes it has the opposite effect.

The wide street featured here is heavily inspired by one that is really close to the highschool I went to and that just like in the picture has a really wide median strip with benches and lamps. In highschool I had the afternoon shift that ended at night so on my way back home I would walk through that street with the lamps illuminating the place. And not only that as I would skip classes often and this was one of my favorite places to go and do nothing at. I've always liked this place a lot and it features a lot of the art from my "cringe phase" or when I was just starting.

When working on this I made an effort to get a good photographic reference for the bike, but unfortunately I wasn't able. So for reference I had to acquire a 3d model. The one I ended up using I bought from Sepinood Studio and as for the park bench I made use of one I had brought previously from Leartes Studios for another piece I had worked on in the past. In the case of the bench I only used it to get the perspective right